Walter Williams

FIRST, here is the article Larry Elder referenced in the audio above regarding the Chicago fire: “Lessons from the Chicago Fire.” WALTER WILLIAMS gives an excellent example of the benefits of price “gouging” (supply and demand) in helping families:

…Here’s a which-is-better question for you. Suppose a hotel room rented for $79 a night prior to Hurricane Katrina’s devastation. Based on that price, an evacuating family of four might rent two adjoining rooms. When they arrive at the hotel, they find the rooms rent for $200; they decide to make do with one room. In my book, that’s wonderful. The family voluntarily opted to make a room available for another family who had to evacuate or whose home was destroyed. Demagogues will call this price-gouging, but I ask you, which is preferable: a room available at $200 or a room unavailable at $79? Rising prices get people to voluntarily economize on goods and services rendered scarcer by the disaster.

After Hurricane Katrina struck, gasoline prices shot up almost a dollar nearly overnight. Some people have been quick to call this price-gouging, particularly since wholesalers and retailers were charging the higher price for gasoline already purchased and in their tanks prior to the hurricane. The fact of business is that what a seller paid for something doesn’t necessarily determine its selling price. Put in a bit more sophisticated way: Historical costs have nothing to do with selling price. For example, suppose you maintained a 10-pound inventory of coffee in your cupboard. When I ran out, you’d occasionally sell me a pound for $2. Suppose there’s a freeze in Brazil destroying much of the coffee crop, driving coffee prices to $5 a pound. Then I come around to purchase coffee. Are you going to charge me $2 a pound, what you paid for it, or $5, what it’s going to cost you to restock your coffee inventory?

[….]

Politicians of both parties have rushed in to exploit public ignorance and emotion. Last week Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich (Democrat) threatened to prosecute gas companies. Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott (Republican) is threatening legal action against what he called “unconscionable pricing” by hotels. Alabama Attorney General Troy King (Republican) promises to vigorously prosecute businesses that significantly increase prices during the state of emergency. The Bush administration has called for the Justice Department and the Federal Trade Commission to look for evidence of price-gouging, and Congress plans to hold hearings on oil company “price-gouging.”

There’s an important downside to these political attacks on producers. What about the next disaster? How much sense does it make for producers to make the extra effort to provide goods and services if they know they risk prosecution for charging what might be seen as “unconscionable prices”? Politicians would serve us better by focusing their energies on tax-gouging.

Dennis Prager reads from an excellent article penned by the indomitable Walter Williams entitled, “NOT ALWAYS LIKE THIS.” In the article is this [of many] nuggets:

“What about the calls for bans on the AR-15 so-called assault rifle? It turns out that according to 2016 FBI statistics, rifles accounted for 368 of the 17,250 homicides in the U.S. that year. That means restrictions on the purchase of rifles would do little or nothing for the homicide rate. Leaders of the gun control movement know this. Their calls for more restrictive gun laws are part of a larger strategy to outlaw gun ownership.”

Gun ownership is not our problem. Our problem is a widespread decline in moral values that has nothing to do with guns. That decline includes disrespect for those in authority, disrespect for oneself, little accountability for anti-social behavior and a scuttling of religious teachings that reinforced moral values. Let’s examine elements of this decline.

‘What we have found is it is taking far, far too much time,’ said Maj. Gen. Malcolm Frost, the commanding general of the US Army Center of Initial Military Training.

‘It’s taking three to four times as much time … just to qualify folks on the hand grenade course than we had designated so what is happening is it is taking away from other aspects of training.’

‘We are finding that there are a large number of trainees that come in that quite frankly just physically don’t have the capacity to throw a hand grenade 20 to 25 to 30 meters,’ he said.

The above was originally uploaded by myself to my MRCTV account on April 26th, 2012. I wrote a post on it on my blog with the same date. I am uploading the audio to my YouTube for easier embedding. Here is the description from the original post being updated today:

Dennis discusses the purpose of the Marines, to win. For the same reason a professional baseball team does not have women on its team is because they cannot perform as well as a man in most situations similar to the analogy of baseball and combat. If so, why not make full fledged women brigades for the front lines? Also, a woman caller who served in the Air Force mentions her not qualifying for the K-9 unit because she could not carry 70lbs. She agreed with that policy… that is, if a women cannot physically meet the demands, then, they should not be allowed into such a position.

Another caller that was in the ARMY when they integrated training points out some of the below in rough terms:

It was July 1959. With about 60 other recruits, I was being welcomed to basic training at Fort Jackson, S.C. According to John Leo’s “A Kinder, Gentler Army” (in U.S. News & World Report on Aug. 8, 1997), such a welcome is now out. Today’s Army manual dictates, “Stress created by physical or verbal abuse is nonproductive and prohibited.” Forget whether traditional adversative training produced a first-class military throughout our history.Why the changes? Partly, it’s because today’s youth are unaccustomed to discipline and authority, but mainly it’s because our lovelies want to be fighting persons. To accommodate them means the military must lower standards. Carrying a stretcher used to be a two-man job, now it’s a four-person job. The Navy finds that few of its females can manage shipboard emergency tasks such as hefting fire hoses or carrying wounded personnel up a ladder on a stretcher.

Females pass physical training because of gender-norming. Yellow lines are put on climbing ropes. Male trainees have to climb to the top, but for our lovelies the yellow line will do. As for those awful push-ups, men have to do 20 and women just six. Then there’s the “confidence course,” called the obstacle course in the pre-P.C. days. At Quantico’s Marine training facility, a visitor noticed a footstool placed in front of an 8-foot wall so no trainee would fail to climb over it.

There’s one male/female strength difference quite worrisome. At Parris Island, it was discovered that 45 percent of female Marines were unable to throw a hand grenade far enough to avoid blowing themselves up. Translated in Williams’ terms: If I were in a foxhole with a woman about to toss a hand grenade, I’d consider her the enemy.

If there is indeed a social revolution under way, it shouldn’t stop with women’s choice to honor their [own] nature. It must also include a newfound respect for men. It was New York City’s firemen who dared to charge up the stairs of the burning Twin Towers on September 11, 2001. The death tally of New York City’s firefighters was: men 343, women 0. Can anyone honestly say you would have wanted a woman coming to your rescue on that fateful day?

(Washington, D.C.: WND Books, 2011), 181-182.

To further make the point, here is David Mamet — of Glengarry Glen Ross fame — noting the above in a very erudite manner:

There is a Liberal sentiment that it should also punish those who take more than their “fair share.” But what is their fair share? (Shakespeare suggests that each should be treated not according to his deserts, but according to God’s mercy, or none of us would escape whipping.)

The concept of Fairness, for all its attractiveness to sentiment, is a dangerous one (cf. quota hiring and enrollment, and talk of “reparations”). Deviations from the Law, which is to say the Constitution, to accommodate specifically alleged identity-group injustices will all inevitably be expanded, universalized, and exploited until there remains no law, but only constant petition of Government.

We cannot live in peace without Law. And though law cannot be perfect, it may be just if it is written in ignorance of the identity of the claimants and applied equally to all. Then it is a possession not only of the claimants but of the society, which may now base its actions upon a reasonable assumption of the law’s treatment.

But “fairness” is not only a nonlegal but an antilegal process, for it deals not with universally applicable principles and strictures, but with specific cases, responding to the perceived or proclaimed needs of individual claimants, and their desire for extralegal preference. And it could be said to substitute fairness (a determination which must always be subjective) for justice (the application of the legislated will of the electorate), is to enshrine greed—the greed, in this case, not for wealth, but for preference. The socialistic spirit of the Left indicts ambition and the pursuit of wealth as Greed, and appeals, supposedly on behalf of “the people,” to the State for “fairness.”….

….But such fairness can only be the non-Constitutional intervention of the State in the legal, Constitutional process—awarding, as it sees fit, money (reparations), preferment (affirmative action), or entertainment (confiscation)….

….”Don’t you care?” is the admonition implicit in the very visage of the Liberals of my acquaintance on their understanding that I have embraced Conservatism. But the Talmud understood of old that good intentions can lead to evil—vide Busing, Urban Renewal, Affirmative Action, Welfare, et cetera, to name the more immedi­ately apparent, and not to mention the, literally, tens of thousands of Federal and State statutes limiting freedom of trade, which is to say, of the right of the individual to make a living, and, so earn that wealth which would, in its necessary expenditure, allow him to provide a living to others….

…. I recognized that though, as a lifelong Liberal, I endorsed and paid lip service to “social justice,” which is to say, to equality of result, I actually based the important decisions of my life—those in which I was personally going to be affected by the outcome—upon the principle of equality of opportunity; and, further, that so did everyone I knew. Many, I saw, were prepared to pay more taxes, as a form of Charity, which is to say, to hand off to the Government the choice of programs and recipients of their hard-earned money, but no one was prepared to be on the short end of the failed Government pro­grams, however well-intentioned. (For example—one might endorse a program giving to minorities preference in award of government contracts; but, as a business owner, one would fight to get the best possible job under the best possible terms regardless of such a pro­gram, and would, in fact, work by all legal and, perhaps by semi- or illegal means to subvert any program that enforced upon the pro­prietor a bad business decision.)*

Further, one, in paying the government to relieve him of a feeling of social responsibility, might not be bothered to question what in fact constituted a minority, and whether, in fact, such minority con­tracts were actually benefiting the minority so enshrined, or were being subverted to shell corporations and straw men.†

*No one would say of a firefighter, hired under rules reducing the height requirement, and thus unable to carry one’s child to safety, “Nonetheless, I am glad I voted for that ‘more fair’ law.”

† As, indeed, they are, or, in the best case, to those among the applicants claiming eligibility most capable of framing, supporting, or bribing their claims to the front of the line. All claims cannot be met. The politicians and bureaucrats discriminating between claims will neces­sarily favor those redounding to their individual or party benefit—so the eternal problem of “Fairness,” supposedly solved by Government distribution of funds, becomes, yet again and inevitably, a question of graft.

First, the estimated 6,000 African-Americans who did fight for the Confederacy were mostly slaves, and forced to do so—many deserted when the Confiscation Acts and Emancipation Proclamation offered freedom to those who crossed Union lines. Second, black soldiers represented less than 1 percent of the 750,000 white Confederates—and a tiny fraction of the 200,000 blacks who served the Union military.

Here is the main problem of the monument proposed in South Carolina… there were no blacks that fought for the confederacy in SC:

At a time when people are battling over whether to take down Confederate War statues and memorials, a pair of state lawmakers in South Carolina want to put one up.

And it wouldn’t be just another Civil War monument. It would be a monument to honor the sacrifices of black Confederate troops from South Carolina.

Problem is, historians say there weren’t any black Confederate soldiers in South Carolina.

[…..]

But Walter Edgar, considered to be the premier historian on all things South Carolina, said there’s no evidence there were ever any black soldiers that fought under the Confederate banner.

“In all my years of research, I can say I have seen no documentation of black South Carolina soldiers fighting for the Confederacy,” Edgar told The State newspaper in Columbia, South Carolina. “In fact, when secession came, the state turned down free (blacks) who wanted to volunteer because they didn’t want armed persons of color.”

There were blacks in the Confederate army, but they were either slaves or free blacks forced to work without pay as cooks or servants, said Edgar, a professor emeritus at the University of South Carolina and author of “South Carolina: A History.”…

(EDITOR’S NOTE: The above came from CNN, and it is unfortunate that they used the Southern Poverty Law Center to finish the column.) For some commentary on the black soldier’s that did serve [in other states], see Carol Swain’s post via Walter Williams: Black Confederates Were More Than Cooks And Servants

It was the author of the U.S. Constitution James Madison, who proclaimed:

“The government of the United States is a definite government, confined to specified objects. It is not like the state governments, whose powers are more general. Charity is no part of the legislative duty of the government.”

(click to enlarge)

In this latest example (originally posted Sept of 2012) of John Van Huzuim’s conflating terms and ideas, we see a prime example of how liberals will argue. First, let us deal with how the framers of the Constitution understood “General Welfare,” and not what John says it means or how he thinks conservative Republicans understand it. Here is some input from two of the authors of the Constitution, professor Williams explains:

On September 17, 1787, thirty-nine men signed the U.S. Constitution. Each year since 2004, we have celebrated Constitution Day as a result of legislation fathered by Senator Robert Byrd that requires federal agencies, and every school that receives federal funds, including universities, to have some kind of program on the Constitution. I cannot think of a more deceitful piece of legislation or a more constitutionally odious person to father it – a person who is known as, and proudly wears the label, “King of Pork.” The only reason that Constitution Day is not greeted with contempt is because most Americans are totally ignorant about the framer’s vision in writing our constitution. Let’s examine that vision to see how much faith and allegiance today’s Americans give to the U.S. Constitution.

James Madison is the acknowledged father of the constitution. In 1794, when Congress appropriated $15,000 for relief of French refugees who fled from insurrection in San Domingo to Baltimore and Philadelphia. James Madison wrote disapprovingly, “I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.” Today, at least two-thirds of a $2.5 trillion federal budget is spent on the “objects of benevolence.” That includes Medicare, Medicaid, Social Security, aid to higher education, farm and business subsidies, welfare, ad nauseam.

A few years later, James Madison’s vision was expressed by Representative William Giles of Virginia, who condemned a relief measure for fire victims. Giles insisted that it was neither the purpose nor a right of Congress to “attend to what generosity and humanity require, but to what the Constitution and their duty require.”

In 1827, Davy Crockett was elected to the House of Representatives. During his term of office a $10,000 relief measure was proposed to assist the widow of a naval officer. Davy Crockett eloquently opposed the measure saying, “Mr. Speaker: I have as much respect for the memory of the deceased, and as much sympathy for the suffering of the living, if there be, as any man in this House, but we must not permit our respect for the dead or our sympathy for part of the living to lead us into an act of injustice to the balance of the living. I will not go into an argument to prove that Congress has not the power to appropriate this money as an act of charity. Every member on this floor knows it. We have the right as individuals, to give away as much of our own money as we please in charity; but as members of Congress we have no right to appropriate a dollar of the public money.”

In 1854, President Franklin Pierce vetoed a popular measure to help the mentally ill saying, “I cannot find any authority in the Constitution for public charity.” To approve the measure “would be contrary to the letter and the spirit of the Constitution and subversive to the whole theory upon which the Union of these States is founded.” During President Grover Cleveland’s two terms in office, he vetoed many congressional appropriations, often saying there was no constitutional authority for such an appropriation. Vetoing a bill for relief charity, President Cleveland said, “I can find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution, and I do not believe that the power and duty of the General Government ought to be extended to the relief of individual suffering which is in no manner properly related to the public service or benefit.”

Compared to today, yesteryear’s vision vastly differs in what congressional actions are constitutionally permissible. How might today’s congress, president and courts square their behavior with that of their predecessors? The most generous interpretation of their behavior I can give is their misunderstanding of Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution that reads, “The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States.” Misuse of the “general welfare” clause serves as warrant for Congress to do just about anything upon which it can secure a majority vote.

The framers addressed the misinterpretation of the “general welfare clause. James Madison said, in a letter to James Robertson, “With respect to the two words ‘general welfare’, I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators.” James Madison also said, “If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the General Welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one, possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one, subject to particular exceptions.” James Madison laid out what he saw as constitutional limits on federal power in Federalist Paper Number 45 where he explained, “The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government are few and defined . . . to be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce.”

Thomas Jefferson explained in a letter to Albert Gallatin, “Congress has not unlimited powers to provide for the general welfare, but only those specifically enumerated.”

What accounts for today’s acceptance of a massive departure from the framer’s clear vision of what federal activities were constitutionally permissible? It is tempting to blame politicians and yes we can blame them some but most of the blame lies with the American people who are either ignorant of the constitutional limits the framers imposed on the federal government or they have contempt for those limits….

POLITISTICK notes the difference when they write: “Progressives and their communist cousins — even RINOs (Republicans in name only) will argue the ‘General Welfare’ clause is somehow being authorization for the federal government to spend on anything members of Congress dreams up.” Continuing Madison is again quoted from:

James Madison, in his brilliance, anticipated this argument, of course, and shot it down on several different occasions:

“If Congress can do whatever in their discretion can be done by money, and will promote the general welfare, the Government is no longer a limited one possessing enumerated powers, but an indefinite one subject to particular exceptions.”

In other words, if the words “general welfare” meant going outside of the enumerated powers, there would have been no reason to even write the enumerated powers in the first place!

Madison further imagined where Congress might stretch the General Welfare clause if it were misinterpreted to be open-ended:

If Congress can apply money indefinitely to the general welfare, and are the sole and supreme judges of the general welfare, they may take the care of religion into their own hands; they may establish teachers in every State, county, and parish, and pay them out of the public Treasury; they may take into their own hands the education of children, establishing in like manner schools throughout the Union; they may undertake the regulation of all roads other than post-roads.

In short, everything, from the highest object of State legislation, down to the most minute object of police, would be thrown under the power of Congress; for every object I have mentioned would admit the application of money, and might be called, if Congress pleased, provisions for the general welfare.

[….]

For all of the reasons above, with the Democrat Party all but merging with the Communist Party USA and the Republicans, led by big government RINO’s Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell, only wanting slightly smaller and just barely less unconstitutional than the Democrats, I strongly support both the Convention of States and the Federalist Party. Both parties are arguing which can bastardize the U.S. Constitution the most. We know that the Democrats will always be the most aggressive in this venture but the Republicans are not far behind.

The Sage from South-Central

Larry Elder on his radio program takes a call in regards to this exact same understanding of the General Welfare Clause.

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Ben Franklin Money Quote

I am for doing good to the poor, but I differ in opinion of the means. I think the best way of doing good to the poor, is not making them easy in poverty, but leading or driving them out of it. In my youth I travelled much, and I observed in different countries, that the more public provisions were made for the poor, the less they provided for themselves, and of course became poorer. And, on the contrary, the less was done for them, the more they did for themselves, and became richer. (Ben Franklin)

In another ARTICLE Professor Williams ends with this, and I think it is suitable for this discussion:

You might say, “If our Constitution provides no authority for programs near and dear to the hearts of so many Americans, the heck with the Constitution.” If that’s your perspective, you’re in good company. The Courts, Congress and the White House beat you to it. Long ago they said, “The heck with the Constitution.”

This is what John is saying, the heck with the constitution! Take note as well that not only does he miss-defines what conservative think, he also argues for police and fire personnel, and then from there jumps to welfare programs (the war on poverty, so-called). (Remember what I always point out with John? Non-sequiturs… he is full of them.) Now, Obama-Care is placed under this umbrella the writers of the clause rejected. I will end here with Professor Williams in regards to Obama-Care:

Here is the second part to POLITISTICK’s post on the matter… love me some Madison!

…Only certain, specifically identified powers, called “enumerated powers,” were delegated to the federal government from the states — powers that the Founding Fathers believed were best performed on a national basis, duties like “provide for the common defense,” to coin money, establish uniform immigration laws, “Post Offices,” treaties with foreign nations, to regulate (which does not mean restrict) interstate commerce, and a few others. These powers were clearly listed in Article I, Section 8, of the U.S. Constitution.

“The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government, are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite.”

Madison further described the proper role for the soon-to-be federal government versus the unique roles of the individual states:

“The former will be exercised principally on external objects, as war, peace, negotiation, and foreign commerce; with which last the power of taxation will, for the most part, be connected. The powers reserved to the several States will extend to all the objects which, in the ordinary course of affairs, concern the lives, liberties, and properties of the people, and the internal order, improvement, and prosperity of the State.”

So (let’s forget the politicized decision by the tyrants in black robes who declared Obamacare constitutional — it is not) what does this mean? Would a full single-payer healthcare system like the one proposed in California (which would have more than doubled the entire state budget) be allowed by the U.S. Constitution?

You bet it would — on the state level — but NOT on the national level. If people in California want to more than double their already exorbitant taxes in order to pay for such a system, they are allowed to under the Tenth Amendment, which states, referring to Article I, Section 8:

“The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”

Nowhere in Article I, Section 8 of the Constitution among the enumerated powers are the words, medicine, health care, doctor visits, surgery, healthcare insurance (yes, people got sick in the late 1700’s and there were doctors and medicine), or anything like this even remotely mentioned as a power being transferred by the states to the federal government…..

This is an excerpt dealing with some short biographies of people Obama chose to surround himself with. You can see they are radicals who export Marxist ideals into public policy as well as some overtly anti-American positions. I would say “enjoy” the read, but I cannot.

Cass Sunstein was the Edward Mandell House/Rexford Tugwell char­acter in the Obama administration. He was appointed to run Obama’s White House Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs in 2009. He left the administration in 2011 to return to Harvard, where he continues to brainwash his students into supporting his anti-Constitutional and totalitarian beliefs.

Sunstein is the consummate Progressive and utopian tyrant. He believes that the Constitution is a “living document”—code words for liberal judges having the power to interpret the Constitution and law in general to support the latest leftist political agenda.

Writing in The Partial Constitution (Harvard University Press, 1993), Sunstein pushed the idea of a “First Amendment New Deal,” which would create a government panel of experts to ensure a “diversity of views” on the airwaves. Imagine a panel of presidential appointees determining what constitutes diversity on TV and radio.

Sunstein also believes hunting should be banned, that animals should have the same rights as humans, and that lawyers should be empowered to file lawsuits on behalf of animals. Despite being against the killing of rabbits or deer, he is, like all Progressives, perfectly agreeable to destroying unborn humans at any stage of pregnancy.

In 2004 he published A Second Bill of Rights: FDR’s Unfinished Revolution and Why We Need It More Than Ever. In it, he proposed a series of “rights” for individuals that would inevitably result in greatly expanding the power of the federal government over every aspect of our lives.

According to Sunstein, “Much of the time, the United States seems to have embraced a confused and pernicious form of individualism. This approach endorses rights of private property and freedom of contract, and respects political liberty, but claims to distrust ‘government inter­vention’ and insists that people must fend for themselves. This form of so-called individualism is incoherent, a tangle of confusions.”

Sunstein’s views sound like those of Benito Mussolini or Philip Dru in the utopian novel.

JOHN HOLDREN

President Obama appointed John Holdren to run the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and to cochair the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology.

Holdren sounds like a very dangerous tyrant in his written state­ments on population control and other issues. In 1977 he coauthored a book with Paul R. and Anne H. Ehrlich, titled Ecoscience: Population, Resources, Environment (W. H. Freeman, 1978), which seriously pro­posed, among other things, that women should be forced to abort their children; that populations should be sterilized by dropping drugs into the water supply; that people who “contribute to social deterioration” should be forcibly sterilized or forced to abort their children; that a “Planetary Regime” should assume total control of the global economy; and that an international police force should be used to dictate how all of us are to live our lives.

Because this was a White House office, the Senate did not have the authority to stop the appointment; however, some senators should have come forward and pointed out on the record that Holdren’s suggestions were very much the same as those of fascist utopian Adolf Hitler.

Holdren openly condemns the free enterprise system as the enemy of the people and a threat to the environment. Writing in his 1973 book, Human Ecology: Problems and Solutions, also cowritten with the Ehrlichs, he called for a “massive campaign . . . to de-develop the United States” and other Western nations.

According to Holdren, the “mad czar” of science and technology:

De-development means bringing our economic system (especially pat­terns of consumption) into line with the realities of ecology and the global resource situation…. The need for de-development presents our economists with a major challenge. They must design a stable, low-consumption economy in which there is a much more equitable distribution of wealth than in the present one. Redistribution of wealth both within and among nations is absolutely essential if a decent life is to be provided for every human being.

The Soviet Union successfully did away with “planned obsoles­cence” by eliminating innovation. As no new cars were designed for decades, vehicles like the unsafe Lada lived on unchanged for decades. Like many Progressives who believe jobs should be “preserved” as a right, Holdren does not understand that artificially preserving out­dated industries and nonproductive jobs results in a failure for new industries to come into existence.

DONALD BERWICK

Dr. Berwick was picked by President Obama to run the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Knowing that Berwick’s views were so radical, Obama used a recess appointment to get him into this position so he wouldn’t have to undergo Senate scrutiny. Once his recess gig expired, he simply resigned to avoid having to answer questions under oath before a Senate committee.

Berwick has an open love affair with the British National Health Service (NHS). In his own words, “I’m romantic about the National Health Service. I love it!” In fact, he loves it so much that he says it is an “example for the whole world—an example… that the United States needs now.” ‘Why? Because he considers America’s health care system to be “immoral” and an example of the “darkness of private enterprise.” And in typical utopian-tyrant fashion, he believes that only government-enforced “collective action” can override “individual self-interest.”

He was, however, a bit more honest than his boss, President Obama. He openly admitted that under Obamacare, “the decision is not whether or not we will ration care, the decision is whether we will ration with our eyes open.” Conservatives always find this a terrifying thing about central planners—their willingness, even eagerness, to assume the role of making life-and-death decisions about the fate of other individuals.

So, how is the love of his socialist life working for British citizens, keeping in mind that this is the same system he wanted to bring to the United States? The Boston Globe shares some quotes from UK newspapers:

And to top it all off, in Britain 36 percent of patients wait more than four months for nonemergency surgery. In America, only 5 percent do.

According to Berwick, “Any healthcare funding plan that is just, equitable, civilized and humane, must redistribute wealth from the richer among us to the poorer and the less fortunate. Excellent health­care is by definition distributional.”

That sounds familiar, doesn’t it? From Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and Lyndon Johnson to Barack Obama, there’s a clear socialist utopian model in play that results in the control of Americans’ lives through rationed medical care.

These are only three of the most high-profile utopian totalitarians to serve in the Obama administration, but they are typical of those whom the president picked to assist in an Imperial Presidency in which central planning of society has become the goal.

FOOD UTOPIANS

First Lady Michelle Obama and former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg are what could be politely referred to as the “Food Police” by the vast majority of Americans who prefer to choose their own foods. A more accurate description would be Food Nazis, because they both desire to dictate to Americans what they will eat, how much they will eat, and what size portions they will be served at restaurants.

Mrs. Obama’s mind-set about Americans may be defined by her husband’s definition of her during pre—White House years as his “bitter half.” Apparently even President Obama knew that his wife was not capable of seeing a glass half full; how, then, could she possibly see that a hamburger with lettuce and tomato was actually a balanced meal?

Michelle Obama decided early on that she would seize the issues of “childhood obesity” and “food deserts” as her crusade while inhabiting the White House. She and her utopian handlers created the “Let’s Move” campaign to force restaurants, schools, and parents to feed children more “nutritious” meals. Initially she wanted a mere $400 million from taxpayers for her program.

Without any real evidence, Mrs. Obama has claimed that poor Americans are trapped in what she calls “food deserts,” where they must apparently trudge for miles outside of their dismal neighborhoods to buy a piece of fruit or some celery sticks. According to Mrs. Obama, a food desert is an inner city without a grocery store. She envisioned spending millions of federal dollars to plant grocery stores in those blighted areas so the “poor” won’t have to buy food at mini-marts.

vention in April 2012. There he told an absurd story about how Barack Obama, who attended Harvard University, knows what “it’s like to take a subway or a bus just to find a fresh piece of fruit in a grocery store.” No fruit at Harvard?

The story may be ridiculous, but Michelle Obama was dead serious about extorting $400 million from American taxpayers to solve the nonexistent problem of food deserts.

In reality there are no such things as food deserts. Researcher Roland Sturm at the Rand Corporation studied food desert claims and found that individuals in urban areas can get any kind of food they want within a couple of miles. He suggested we call these areas “food swamps,” rather than food deserts.

In addition, researcher Helen Lee at the Public Policy Institute in California found that in poor neighborhoods, citizens had twice as many fast-food restaurants and convenience stores as wealthier neighborhoods had, and more than three times as many corner stores. These areas had twice as many supermarkets and large-scale grocery stores as wealthier neighborhoods.

The truth was exactly the opposite of Mrs. Obama’s claim, but hers satisfied the mind-set of the utopians, who believe they alone could solve problems that never existed. Mrs. Obama later began a second crusade to force restaurants and schools to serve “healthy” foods, ban “junk food,” and bully restaurants into serving smaller portions.

Michelle Obama worked in 2010 to get Congress to pass a nutri­tion bill that would give the Department of Agriculture new powers to regulate school lunches. The bill was passed in December of that year, and now that the regulations have gone into effect, it is having a devastating impact on students and their angry parents.

Under Department of Agriculture edicts, cinnamon rolls and chili are banned. School bands and groups can’t sell candy bars for fund-raising. The government is now mandating portion sizes, including how many tomatoes must go into a salad!

Children are permitted to refuse three items on a tray, but not fruits and vegetables. Of course, the Food Police can’t yet force them to eat their veggies, but it’s not far-fetched to think they might someday. After all, the Obamas have rammed through legislation that initially demanded that nuns buy insurance coverage for contraception and preg­nancy. Fortunately the Supreme Court ended that requirement in 2014.

The new federal guidelines, thanks to Michelle Obama, now limit caloric intake to between 750 and 850 a day for schoolchildren. Teenagers require between 2,000 and 3,000 calories a day to be healthy and grow, and high school athletes need up to 5,000 calories per day. In short, the First Lady is responsible for malnourishing kids through the school lunch program.

In 2006 the three-term mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg, decided to add the title “Food Police Chief’ to his list of duties in the Big Apple. That year, he banished trans fats from city restaurants and, in 2010, forced food manufacturers to alter their recipes to include less sodium. He failed, however, to remove salt shakers from the tables. Patrons who receive a dish of food at a New York restaurant that they deem not salty enough may still simply add salt.

In spring 2012 Bloomberg decided that New Yorkers had to be protected even more from themselves, so he issued an edict banning soft drinks larger than sixteen ounces. The ban applied to restaurants, movie theaters, stadiums, and arenas.

In August 2012 Bloomberg banned the distribution of baby formula in city hospitals unless it is medically necessary because he, a man, had decided that new mothers should always breast-feed regardless of their weight, professions, or other personal details. Free formula provided to mothers was also eliminated. Bloomberg determined that breast-feeding is best for children and that new mothers should not have a voice in the decision regardless of their circumstances. But Bloomberg did want women to have freedom of choice to kill their young before they are born. He was willing to give moms the option to abort their unborn babies, but not to feed formula to those who are living.

What is next for those like Obama and Bloomberg? Mandated cal­isthenics each morning at six? Currently the United States seems to be incubating and hatching utopian tyrants at an alarming rate.

WATERMELONS

[Green on the outside, “red” on the inside]

America is threatened not only by the Food Nazis, but by the Watermelon Utopians, who are working to destroy our industrialized civilization and bring us back to an agrarian society in the name of the environment.

These are the Watermelons. They’re Red (Marxist-Leninist) on the inside, but are using the Green movement on the outside to promote totalitarian central-planned government.

VAN JONES

The poster child for this Watermelon movement is Van Jones, a Marxist with a nice smile who hates free enterprise just a bit less than nuclear power and fossil fuels.

In March 2009 President Obama picked Jones to be his “Green Jobs Czar.” In September 2009 Jones resigned after television host Glenn Beck exposed the fact that Jones was a militant Marxist radical.

After his departure from the Obama administration, Jones went to work at the Center for American Progress, a socialist group funded by one-worlder George Soros. Jones also began teaching at Princeton University at the African American Studies and Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs. He is a “senior fellow” at the Center for American Progress and is an advisor for the extremist group Green for All, which he founded in 2007.

In an unsurprising way, Van Jones symbolizes the support Barack Obama received from the left that helped him win two terms. Jones also highlights the vast portion of the US population who do want the government to take care of all their needs and are willing to allow government to be the god of their lives in return.

Jones openly said he became a Communist shortly after the 1992 Rodney King riots and the trial. According to Jones, “I was a rowdy nationalist on April 28th” and “by August, I was a communist.”

In 1993 he moved to San Francisco and helped found the Bay Area Police Watch, which demonized the police in that city. In 1996 he founded the Ella Baker Center for Human Rights, designed to under­mine the criminal justice system, which he saw as unjust to minorities. The Baker Center received more than $1 million from George Soros’s Open Society Institute.

As Jones’s commitment to Marxist-type central planning grew in the late ’90s, he became a leader of the group called STORM (Standing Together to Organize a Revolutionary Movement).

Then in 2006 Jones endorsed an antipolice day held by the Maoist Revolutionary Communist Party. Jones considers all American prisons to be racist and nothing more than “slave ships on dry land.”

As a green activist, Jones demanded that America “build a pipe­line from the prison economy to the green economy.” He wants the federal government to hire ex-felons to work in “green jobs” to do weather-stripping for energy efficiency in homes and offices. He did not mention if the home and business owners would be informed of workers’ felony convictions.

According to Jones, in an interview on Uprising Radio in Los Angeles, “The green economy will start off as a small subset” of a “com­plete revolution” against what he calls “gray capitalism.” The goal is the “redistribution of all wealth.”

Part of this anticapitalist effort is being accomplished through Green for All, funded in part by George Soros and our incredibly wealthy former vice president Al Gore—a true multimillionaire of the people. The organization’s alleged purpose is “building an inclusive green economy strong enough to lift people out of poverty.” In reality the plan would use taxpayer dollars to fund centrally planned government-run boondoggles in the inner cities.

Jones has openly admitted that his green agenda is designed to destroy capitalism. “We are going to push it and push it until it becomes the engine for transforming the whole society,” he said.

If you listen closely, Dr. Williams refuses to use the term “African American” in a simple discussion of the issues facing Americans:

In fact, in an old article, Dr. Williams spells out his thinking clearly… one post sums up Walter Williams main points well:

First it devalues the diversity within Africa – Africa is filled with nations and regions with diverse histories, peoples, ethnicities and leaders. Second, it perpetuates the whole trend that Americans and Europeans need to help them poor AFRICANS. So we devise buy a water bottle and feed a African child campaign – or consumeristic ploys that convince you to buy products to that .00000001% goes to some African AID/HIV fund where the marketing costs more than what is donated. Third – using the term African American is retarded b.c it takes away from the concept that Blacks ARE Americans – they are more American than anyone else who claims to be American because they built this country – they built up our profits, our surplus – they literally built Wall Street in NYC! They gave America culture – and all along dominant America stole their bodies, their labor, their minds and their rhythms – so this time around can we at least not try to steal their identities? If Blacks are telling us the term “african-American” doesn’t make sense -we should listen! Wouldn’t it sound retarded to call white Ameircans “European Americans”? It non-sensical to add a pre-fix to their “Americaness” because doing so takes away their Americaness. Fourth – Blacks whose ancestry date back to slavery are not from all over the African continent – mostly they were captured and sold from African’s gold coast – Western Africa fight – the label “African-American” is very inappropriate because many blacks trace their ancestory to the Carribeans – or to Brazil – or to Mexico.

While I am not a fan of Woodrow Wilson at all, he makes a great point in this WIKI article:

The term “hyphenated American” was published by 1889, and was common as a derogatory term by 1904. During World War I the issue arose of the primary political loyalty of ethnic groups with close ties to Europe, especially German Americans and also Irish Americans. Former President Theodore Roosevelt in speaking to the largely Irish Catholic Knights of Columbus at Carnegie Hall on Columbus Day 1915, asserted that,

There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism. When I refer to hyphenated Americans, I do not refer to naturalized Americans. Some of the very best Americans I have ever known were naturalized Americans, Americans born abroad. But a hyphenated American is not an American at all … The one absolutely certain way of bringing this nation to ruin, of preventing all possibility of its continuing to be a nation at all, would be to permit it to become a tangle of squabbling nationalities, an intricate knot of German-Americans, Irish-Americans, English-Americans, French-Americans, Scandinavian-Americans or Italian-Americans, each preserving its separate nationality, each at heart feeling more sympathy with Europeans of that nationality, than with the other citizens of the American Republic … There is no such thing as a hyphenated American who is a good American. The only man who is a good American is the man who is an American and nothing else.

President Woodrow Wilson regarded “hyphenated Americans” with suspicion, saying, “Any man who carries a hyphen about with him carries a dagger that he is ready to plunge into the vitals of this Republic whenever he gets ready.”

The modern Left is all about division. Separating people. And by separating [dividing], a culture is conquered:

….Most black families in the United States today have been here longer than most white families. No one except the American Indians can claim to have been on American soil longer. Why then call blacks in the United States “African-Americans” when not even their great-great-great-grandparents ever laid eyes on Africa?

It is certainly understandable that activists, politicians and others who wish to divide Americans for their own purposes would push the notion of “African-Americans.” They also push such things as the “African” holiday Kwanzaa – which originated in Los Angeles – and “black English” or “ebonics,” which originated centuries ago in particular localities in Britain, and is wholly unknown in Africa.

It is certainly understandable that activists, politicians and others who wish to divide Americans for their own purposes would push the notion of “African-Americans.” They also push such things as the “African” holiday Kwanzaa – which originated in Los Angeles – and “black English” or “ebonics,” which originated centuries ago in particular localities in Britain, and is wholly unknown in Africa.

Names are just part of the process of creating wholesale frauds about the past in order to advance special agendas in the present. Personal names are also part of that fraud.

[….]

Of all the reactions against the supposed “slave names” among blacks, the most painfully ironic has been the taking of Arab names instead. The Arabs engaged in massive enslavement of Africans before the Europeans began to and continued long after the Europeans stopped.

One of the many reasons for studying history is to prevent history from being misused for current hidden agendas. Names are just one of the things being misused in this way.

What prompted this post was a fellow I know — J. Giordano — excerpting a bit from the following book by Theodore Roosevelt. I excerpt more of it here for those who love history:

Theodore Roosevelt, Fear God and Take Your Own Part (New York, NY: George H. Doran, 1916), 17-28; the book is online for reading HERE.

But in addition to fearing God, it is necessary that we should be able and ready to take our own part. The man who cannot take his own part is a nuisance in the community, a source of weakness, an encouragement to wrongdoers and an added burden to the men who wish to do what is right. If he cannot take his own part, then somebody else has to take it for him; and this means that his weakness and cowardice and inefficiency place an added burden on some other man and make that other man’s strength by just so much of less avail to the community as a whole. No man can take the part of any one else unless he is able to take his own part. This is just as true of nations as of men. A nation that cannot take its own part is at times almost as fertile a source of mischief in the world at large as is a nation which does wrong to others, for its very existence puts a premium on such wrongdoing. Therefore, a nation must fit itself to defend its honor and interest against outside aggression; and this necessarily means that in a free democracy every man fit for citizenship must be trained so that he can do his full duty to the nation in war no less than in peace.

Unless we are thorough-going Americans and unless our patriotism is part of the very fiber of our being, we can neither serve God nor take our own part. Whatever may be the case in an infinitely remote future, at present no people can render any service to humanity unless as a people they feel an intense sense of national cohesion and solidarity. The man who loves other nations as much as he does his own, stands on a par with the man who loves other women as much as he does his own wife. The United States can ac­complish little for mankind, save in so far as within its borders it develops an intense spirit of Americanism. A flabby cosmopolitanism, es­pecially if it expresses itself through a flabby pa­cifism, is not only silly, but degrading. It rep­resents national emasculation. The professors of every form of hyphenated Americanism are as truly the foes of this country as if they dwelled outside its borders and made active war against it. This is not a figure of speech, or a hyperbolic statement. The leaders of the hyphenated-American movement in this country (who dur­ing the last eighteen months have been the pro­fessional German-Americans and Austro-Americans) are also leaders in the movement against preparedness. I have before me a little pamphlet, circulated by a “German-American” organiza­tion, consisting of articles written by a German-American for a paper which claims to be the lead­ing German paper in Illinois. This pamphlet is a bitter attack upon the policy of preparedness for the United States, and a slanderous assault on those advocating this American policy. It is, therefore, an effort in the interest of Germany to turn the United States into a larger Belgium—an easy prey for Germany whenever Germany desires to seize it. These professional German-Americans and Pro-Germans are Anti-American to the core. They play the part of traitors, pure and simple. Once it was true that this country could not endure half free and half slave. To­day it is true that it can not endure half Ameri­can and half foreign. The hyphen is incompati­ble with patriotism.

Patriotism should be an integral part of our every feeling at all times, for it is merely another name for those qualities of soul which make a man in peace or in war, by day or by night, think of his duty to his fellows, and of his duty to the nation through which their and his loftiest aspi­rations must find their fitting expression. After the Lusitania was sunk, Mr. Wilson stated in effect that such a time was not the right time to stir up patriotism. This statement is entirely incompatible with having a feeling of deep pa­triotism at any time. It might just as appropri­ately have been made by George Washington im­mediately after his defeat at the Brandywine, or by Abraham Lincoln immediately after the surrender of Fort Sumter; and if in either of these crises our leaders had acted on any such principle we would not now have any country at all. Patriotism is as much a duty in time of war as in time of peace, and it is most of all a duty in any and every great crisis. To commit folly or do evil, to act inconsiderately and hastily or wantonly and viciously, in the name of patriot­ism, represents not patriotism at all, but a use of the name to cloak an attack upon the thing. Such baseness or folly is wrong, at every time and on every occasion. But patriotism itself is not only in place on every occasion and at every time, but is peculiarly the feeling which should be stirred to its deepest depths at every serious crisis. The duty of a leader is to lead; and it is a dreadful thing that any man chosen to lead his fellow-countrymen should himself show, not merely so profound a lack of patriotism, but such misun­derstanding of patriotism, as to be willing to say in a great crisis what President Wilson thus said at the time of the sinking of the Lusitania. This statement, coupled with his statement made about the same time as to being “too proud to fight,” furnishes the clue to the Administration’s policy both before and since. This policy made our great democratic commonwealth false to its duties and its ideals in a tremendous world crisis, at the very time when, if properly led, it could have rendered an inestimable service to all man­kind, and could have placed itself on a higher pinnacle of worthy achievement than ever before.

Patriotism, so far from being incompatible with performance of duty to other nations, is an indispensable prerequisite to doing one’s duty toward other nations. Fear God; and take your own part! If this nation had feared God it would have stood up for the Belgians and Armenians; if it had been able and willing to take its own part there would have been no murderous assault on the Lusitania, no outrages on our men and women in Mexico. True patriotism carries with it not hostility to other nations but a quickened sense of responsible good-will towards other na­tions, a good-will of acts and not merely of words. I stand for a nationalism of duty, to oneself and to others; and, therefore, for a na­tionalism which is a means to internationalism. World peace must rest on the willingness of na­tions with courage, cool foresight, and readiness for self-sacrifice to defend the fabric of interna­tional law. No nation can help in securing an organized, peaceful and justice-doing world com­munity until it is willing to run risks and make efforts in order to secure and maintain such a community.

The nation that in actual practice fears God is the nation which does not wrong its neigh­bors, which does so far as possible help its neighbors, and which never promises what it cannot or will not or ought not to perform. The professional pacifists in and out of office who at peace congresses pass silly resolutions which can­not be, and ought not to be, lived up to, and enter into silly treaties which ought not to be, and can­not be, kept, are not serving God, but Baal. They are not doing anything for anybody.[1] If in addition these people, when the concrete case arises, as in Belgium or Armenia, fear concretely to denounce and antagonize the wrongdoer, they become not merely passive, but active agents of the devil. The professional pacifists who ap­plauded universal arbitration treaties and disar­mament proposals prior to the war, since the war have held meetings and parades in this country on behalf of peace, and have gone on silly mis­sions to Europe on behalf of peace—and the peace they sought to impose on heroes who were battling against infamy was a peace conceived in the interest of the authors of the infamy. They did not dare to say that they stood only for a peace that should right the wrongs of Belgium. They did not dare to denounce the war of aggres­sion by Germany against Belgium. Their souls were too small, their timidity too great. They were even afraid to applaud the war waged by Belgium in its own defence. These pacifists have served morality, have shown that they feared God, exactly as the Pharisees did, when they made broad their philacteries and uttered long prayers in public, but did not lift a finger to lighten the load of the oppressed. When Mr. Wilson and Mr. Bryan made this nation shirk its duty towards Belgium, they made us false to all our high ideals; for they acted and caused this government to act in that spirit of commer­cial opportunism which refuses to do duty to oth­ers unless there is in it pecuniary profit for one‑self. This combination of mean timidity and mean commercial opportunism is peculiarly odi­ous because those practising it have sought to hide it by profuse outbursts of wordy sentimen­tality and loud professions of attachment to im­possible and undesirable ideals. One of the be­setting sins of many of our public servants (and of not a few of our professional moralists, lay and clerical) is to cloak weakness or baseness of action behind insincere oratory on behalf of im­practical ideals. The true servant of the people is the man who preaches realizable ideals; and who then practises what he has preached.

Moreover, even as regards the pacifists who genuinely desire that this nation should fear God, it is to be remembered that if the nation cannot take its own part, the fact that it fears God will be of no practical consequence to any one. No­body cares whether or not the feeling of the Chi­nese people is against international wrongdoing; for, as China is helplessly unable to take her own part, she is in practise even more helpless to take the part of any one else and to secure justice and mercy for any one else. The pacifists who are seeking to Chinafy the United States are not only seeking to bring the United States to ruin, but are also seeking to render it abso­lutely impotent to help upright and well-behaved nations which are oppressed by the military power of unscrupulous neighbors of greater strength.

The professional pacifists, the leaders in the pacifist movement in the United States, do par­ticular harm by giving well-meaning but unin­formed people who do not think deeply what seems to them a convincing excuse for failure to show courage and resolution. Those who preach sloth and cowardice under the high-sounding name of “peace” give people a word with which to cloak, even to themselves, their failure to perform unpleasant duty. For a man to stand up for his own rights, or especially for the rights of somebody else, means that he must have virile qualities: courage, foresight, willing­ness to face risk and undergo effort. It is much easier to be timid and lazy. The average man does not like to face death and endure hard­ship and labor. He can be roused to do so if a leader of the right type, a Washington or Lincoln, appeals to the higher qualities, includ­ing the stern qualities, of his soul. But a leader, or at least a man who holds a leader’s place, earns praise and profit unworthily if he uses his gift of words to lull well-meaning men to sleep, if he assures them that it is their duty to do the easy and selfish thing, and furnishes them high-sounding phrases with which to cover ignoble failure to perform hard and disagreeable duties.

Peace is not the end. Righteousness is the end. When the Saviour saw the money-changers in the Temple he broke the peace by driving them out. At that moment peace could have been obtained readily enough by the simple proc­ess of keeping quiet in the presence of wrong. But instead of preserving peace at the expense of righteousness, the Saviour armed himself with a scourge of cords and drove the money­changers from the Temple. Righteousness is the end, and peace a means to the end, and some­times it is not peace, but war which is the proper means to achieve the end. Righteousness should breed valor and strength. When it does breed them, it is triumphant; and when triumphant, it necessarily brings peace. But peace does not nec­essarily bring righteousness.

As for neutrality, it is well to remember that it is never moral, and may be a particularly mean and hideous form of immorality. It is in itself merely unmoral ; that is, neither moral nor im­moral ; and at times it may be wise and expedi­ent. But it is never anything of which to be proud; and it may be something of which to be heartily ashamed. It is a wicked thing to be neutral between right and wrong. Impartiality does not mean neutrality. Impartial justice con­sists not in being neutral between right and wrong, but in finding out the right and uphold ing it, wherever found, against the wrong. Moreover, submission to an initial wrong means that all protests against subsequent and lesser wrongs are hypocritical and ineffective. Had we protested, in such fashion that our protest was effective, against what was done in Belgium by Germany, and against the sinking of the Lusitania by Germany, we could have (and in such case we ought to have) protested against all sub­sequent and minor infractions of international law and morals, including those which interfered with our commerce or with any other neutral rights. But failure to protest against the first and worst offences of the strongest wrongdoer made it contemptible, and an act of bad faith, to protest against subsequent and smaller mis­deeds; and failure to act (not merely speak or write notes) when our women and children were murdered made protests against interference with American business profits both offensive and ludicrous.

The pacifists have used all kinds of argu­ments in favor of peaceful submission to, or refusal to prepare against, international violence and wrongdoing, and among others the very an­cient arguments based upon the supposed teach­ing of the New Testament against war. In the first place, as I have already pointed out, this argument is quite incompatible with accepting the lesson taught by the action of the Saviour in driving the money-changers from the Temple; not to mention, incidentally, that the duty of pre­paredness has rarely been put in stronger form than by St. Luke in the direction that “He that hath no sword, let him sell his garment and buy one.”

[1] See the excellent little book called “Is War Diminishing?” by Woods and Baltzly. The authors deal, as they necessarily must if truthful deal, with the mischievous activities of those professional pacifists among whom Mr. Andrew Carnegie has attained an unhappy prominence: activities which in this country for the last five years have worked nothing but evil, and very serious evil, to our nation and to humanity at large, and to all genuine movements for the promotion of the peace of righteous­ness. The writers instance Mr. Nicholas Murray Butler as presenting in typical manner the shams and perversions of fact upon which the professional pacifists rely for their propaganda, and remark that these pacifists, “who pride themselves on having the superior moral point of view, openly disregard the truth,” and ask “these professors of ethics, law and justice, these presi­dents of colleges, these moral educators, if morality is not neces­sarily bound up with truth.” The pacifist movement in this country has not only been one of extreme folly and immorality, but has been bolstered by consistent and unwearied falsification of the fads, laudation of shallow and unprincipled demagogues, and condemnation of the upright public servants who fearlessly tell the truth.

To me, this is an example of the left eating itself. This hippie-dippie kid is probably left-wing, and this BLM styled activist is a leftist… and one is telling the other to groom themselves a certain way. I guess she is an employee of the university, but we will soon (like Iran) have a dress code police. Something Walter Williams coined as “lifestyle Nazis” (one and two). The positive thing that may come out of these types of experiences is that we will get more Republican voters as they leave the crazy left.

People were in a tizzy over Mitt Romney’s forced haircut on a fellow student. The Left said this prank was enough to disqualify him from the Presidency. Yet, here, we see the Left wanting to forcefully cut hair due to “cultural appropriation.” Breitbart notes:

…The video begins with the woman threatening the man by asking her friend whether he has a pair of scissors.

An argument ensues as the student insists on his right to have dreadlocks regardless of the style’s cultural origins.

“You’re saying I can’t have this hairstyle because of your culture? Why?” asks the student.

“Because it’s my culture,” responds the student.

The woman proceeds to grab him as he begins to walk away from the situation. When the white student pushes back, she accuses the man of putting his hands on her….

While it seems liberals may think that raising the minimum wage will raise living standards for poor Americans, they should have seen this coming.

With Los Angeles joining Seattle in setting a $15 minimum wage (Los Angeles by 2020, and Seattle by 2021), it stands to reason that McDonald’s would find a way around simply paying workers more, as Vox pointed out the obvious fact that “the reality is that McDonald’s just wants to make money.”

In a very real-world example of big business’ response to liberal policies, a conservative Twitter user sent Labor Day wishes from McDonald’s workers whose minimum wage never goes up.

The following is just a couple reasons I am not a fan of Dr. Benjamin Carson in the 2016 Republican primaries. Now, this is of a different tone than my rejection of Ron Paul in years past. At worst Ron Paul is an anti-Semite, even going as far as thinking we were behind 9/11. At best he surrounds his professional career with anti-Semites and 9/11 conspiracy types. A “guilt by proxy” idea, which is more powerful than “guilt by association.”

This post is different however. I like Dr. Ben Carson. I think he would do great in a position like the head of NIH (National Institute of Health), or as head of HHS (Health and Human Services). He would be very effective in an area like that to be front and center in explaining how the implementation of Obama-care is devastating the health industry as well as the patient/doctor relationship.

This post is merely me saying that Dr. Ben Carson is not Presidential material. And the reasons are economics, environment, foreign policy, and being able to respond well to cultural issues.

Let’s start with economics:

Minimum Wage

Here is a recent CATO article responding to a Robert Reich video about raising the minimum wage:

…Perhaps the most remarkable flaw in this video is Reich’s manner of addressing the bedrock economic objection to the minimum wage – namely, that minimum wage prices some low-skilled workers out of jobs. Ignoring supply-and-demand analysis (which depicts the correct common-sense understanding that the higher the minimum wage, the lower is the quantity of unskilled workers that firms can profitably employ), Reich asserts that a higher minimum wage enables workers to spend more money on consumer goods which, in turn, prompts employers to hire more workers. Reich apparently believes that his ability to describe and draw such a “virtuous circle” of increased spending and hiring is reason enough to dismiss the concerns of “scare-mongers” (his term) who worry that raising the price of unskilled labor makes such labor less attractive to employers.

Ignore (as Reich does) that any additional amounts paid in total to workers mean lower profits for firms or higher prices paid by consumers – and, thus, less spending elsewhere in the economy by people other than the higher-paid workers.

Ignore (as Reich does) the extraordinarily low probability that workers who are paid a higher minimum wage will spend all of their additional earnings on goods and services produced by minimum-wage workers.

Ignore (as Reich does) the impossibility of making people richer simply by having them circulate amongst themselves a larger quantity of money. (If Reich is correct that raising the minimum wage by $7.75 per hour will do nothing but enrich all low-wage workers to the tune of $7.75 per hour because workers will spend all of their additional earnings in ways that make it profitable for their employers to pay them an additional $7.75 per hour, then it can legitimately be asked: Why not raise the minimum wage to $150 per hour? If higher minimum wages are fully returned to employers in the form of higher spending by workers as Reich theorizes, then there is no obvious limit to the amount by which government can hike the minimum wage before risking an increase in unemployment.)

Focus instead on Reich’s apparent complete ignorance of the important concept of the elasticity of demand for labor. This concept refers to the responsiveness of employers to changes in wage rates. It’s true that if employers’ demand for unskilled workers is “inelastic,” then a higher minimum wage would indeed put more money into the pockets of unskilled workers as a group. The increased pay of workers who keep their jobs more than offsets the lower pay of worker who lose their jobs. Workers as a group could then spend more in total. But if employers’ demand for unskilled workers is “elastic,” then raising the minimum wage reduces, rather than increases, the amount of money in the pockets of unskilled workers as a group. When the demand for labor is elastic, the higher pay of those workers fortunate enough to keep their jobs is more than offset by the lower pay of workers who lose their jobs. So total spending by minimum-wage workers would likely fall, not rise.

By completely ignoring elasticity, Reich assumes his conclusion. That is, he simply assumes that raising the minimum wage raises the total pay of unskilled workers (and, thereby, raises the total spending of such workers). Yet whether or not raising the minimum wage has this effect is among the core issues in the debate over the merits of minimum-wage legislation. Even if (contrary to fact) increased spending by unskilled workers were sufficient to bootstrap up the employment of such workers, raising the minimum wage might well reduce the total amount of money paid to unskilled workers and, thus, lower their spending….

Dr. Carson’s positions and responses to key issues facing our Republic are lacking depth. As a medical professional he should have had a better answer when asked about homosexuality other than:

“Because a lot of people who go into prison go into prison straight — and when they come out, they’re gay. So, did something happen while they were in there? Ask yourself that question.”

That was a bad answer, and most people would recognize that. And a person of decency and intelligence might respond to his statement by refuting it with logic and reason, by pointing out the myriad flaws in his analogy…

That is weak! And this non-professional conservative-Evangelical blogger can supply a better response than that one without throwing fellow conservatives [or conservatarians] who happen to be gay, under the bus in such a low-level response.

Foreign Policy

And this next section is merely an interview between Dr. Ben Carson and Hugh Hewitt (the transcript is here). And having a son in the military and knowing his peers that serve alongside him I want someone who is serious about the Middle-East.

Energy Policy

As an update to this post, I think HotAir does a great job in showing how Dr. Carson says one things about supporting the free market… and then in the next sentence refuting completely the previous position:

Carson, in his first speech in the state as a candidate, was asked by a voter about the Renewable Fuel Standard (RFS), the federal mandate that fuel refiners blend a certain volume of ethanol and biodiesel into their gasoline and diesel supplies.

“I don’t particularly like the idea of government subsidies for anything because it interferes with the natural free market,” Carson said, according to The Des Moines Register.

Not bad. Subsidies in general are detrimental. If he’d only stopped there. But sadly, he didn’t.

“Therefore, I would probably be in favor of taking that $4 billion a year we spend on oil subsidies and using that in new fueling stations” for 30 percent ethanol blends, he added.

How much wrong can you package into just one sentence? First of all… thirty percent blends? We’re fighting like mad to hold the line against E-15 as it is. I don’t even need to go back over all the reasons why yet again in this article. But let’s move on to the other half of that pitch.

He’s suggesting cutting subsidies for domestic energy companies in the oil and gas industry. Not for everyone, mind you. Just them. And then reallocating that money away from fossil fuels and into ethanol processing. Just five seconds before that Carson had been claiming that he didn’t want anyone interfering with the free market, but now he’s saying to cherry pick one specific set of companies in the energy sector, remove a subsidy from them, and then redirect it to benefit the ethanol industry? It’s difficult to imagine a more egregious example of the government picking winners and losers, with the winners just happening to be in the first caucus state.

Second, calling out the “subsidies for Big Oil” is the language of the Left, and as usual it’s complete horse hockey. As anyone who follows this topic knows, the subsidies received by oil and gas companies are not specific to them. They are precisely the same as subsidies given to almost anyone who sells anything, including Apple and Microsoft among so many others. In fact, you couldn’t just cancel the subsidies to the fossil fuel segment of the energy industry without rewriting the rules entirely just to exclude them. That’s a left wing, anti-energy talking point and Carson should be embarrassed to be saying it in front of an ostensibly conservative crowd.

On my TV show this week, statistician Bjorn Lomborg points out that “air pollution kills 4.3 million people each year … We need to get a sense of priority.” That deadly air pollution happens because, to keep warm, poor people burn dung in their huts.

Yet, time and again, environmentalists oppose the energy production most likely to make the world cleaner and safer. Instead, they persuade politicians to spend billions of your dollars on symbolism like “renewable” energy.

“The amazing number that most people haven’t heard is, if you take all the solar panels and all the wind turbines in the world,” says Lomborg, “they have (eliminated) less CO2 than what U.S. fracking (cracking rocks below ground to extract oil and natural gas) managed to do.”

That progress occurred despite opposition from environmentalists — and even bans in places like my stupid state, New York, where activists worry fracking will cause earthquakes or poison the water….

Liberalism = Death

Ethanol is killing children around the world… Democrats! It takes 450lbs of Corn to fill one SUV tank… that is a years worth of food for multiple children, not to mention the rise of corn-based food for the poor worldwide.

And while Gateway mentions is, this is actually old news. For instance, I quoted economist Walter Williams back in March of 2008 saying,

…Ethanol is 20 to 30 percent less efficient than gasoline, making it more expensive per highway mile. It takes 450 pounds of corn to produce the ethanol to fill one SUV tank. That’s enough corn to feed one person for a year. Plus, it takes more than one gallon of fossil fuel — oil and natural gas — to produce one gallon of ethanol. After all, corn must be grown, fertilized, harvested and trucked to ethanol producers — all of which are fuel-using activities. And, it takes 1,700 gallons of water to produce one gallon of ethanol. On top of all this, if our total annual corn output were put to ethanol production, it would reduce gasoline consumption by 10 or 12 percent.

Ethanol is so costly that it wouldn’t make it in a free market. That’s why Congress has enacted major ethanol subsidies, about $1.05 to $1.38 a gallon, which is no less than a tax on consumers. In fact, there’s a double tax — one in the form of ethanol subsidies and another in the form of handouts to corn farmers to the tune of $9.5 billion in 2005 alone.

There’s something else wrong with this picture. If Congress and President Bush say we need less reliance on oil and greater use of renewable fuels, then why would Congress impose a stiff tariff, 54 cents a gallon, on ethanol from Brazil? Brazilian ethanol, by the way, is produced from sugar cane and is far more energy efficient, cleaner and cheaper to produce.

Ethanol production has driven up the prices of corn-fed livestock, such as beef, chicken and dairy products, and products made from corn, such as cereals. As a result of higher demand for corn, other grain prices, such as soybean and wheat, have risen dramatically. The fact that the U.S. is the world’s largest grain producer and exporter means that the ethanol-induced higher grain prices will have a worldwide impact on food prices….

The researchers, led by assistant professor Adam Liska, used a supercomputer model at UNL’s Holland Computing Center to estimate the effect of residue removal on 128 million acres across 12 Corn Belt states. The team found that removing crop residue from cornfields generates an additional 50 to 70 grams of carbon dioxide per megajoule of biofuel energy produced (a joule is a measure of energy and is roughly equivalent to 1 BTU). Total annual production emissions, averaged over five years, would equal about 100 grams of carbon dioxide per megajoule — which is 7 percent greater than gasoline emissions and 62 grams above the 60 percent reduction in greenhouse gas emissions as required by the 2007 Energy Independence and Security Act.

Jan Morgan is the first in my updated reasons for Ben Carson not getting my enthusiasm:

Dr. Ben Carson, on Fox News tonight said he and Al Sharpton have the same goal.

Carson on Fox: “Mr. Sharpton and I have the same goal: to build a brighter, stronger America that provides equal opportunities and access to the underserved and forgotten. ” (end quote)

Only an idiot would truly believe that Al Sharpton has the goal to build a brighter, stronger America that provides equal opportunities and access to the underserved and forgotten..

Al Sharpton is about himself.. period..

He has exploited black people and race for the advancement of his own personal exposure at a great expense to our country and race relations.

Al Sharpton, Jessie Jackson, and Reverend Wright are 3 people NO ONE seeking the office of President, should have ANY association with in any fashion.

All three are enemies of our Constitutional Republic… [BAM!]

2nd Amendment

This is one that bothers me, it is when politicians speak about the Second Amendment and “semi-automtic” weapons. If Carson thinks the “life” in the Declaration is immutable, why not the 2nd Amendment as an immutable right?

Answer, because Carson does not think the Constitution provides rights, but the government does. And so the government can defines these rights… “well a baby isn’t human u-n-t-i-l-l…” ~or~ “the Constitution only meant you to have a 7-round clip…” etc.

When Government see’s itself in the place of God, slippery slopes happen often. In this case, God given rights are only applicable if you live in the suburbs:

Appearing on Glenn Beck‘s radio show this past week, Dr. Benjamin Carson took a vastly different stance from most conservatives on the issue of gun control, claiming you shouldn’t be able to own semi-automatic weapons in large cities.

Carson became a newfound conservative herolast month when he spoke at the National Prayer Breakfast and laid out a series of criticisms of ObamaCare, political correctness, and tax policy right in front of the president himself. Many called the speech “inappropriate” given the apolitical nature of the event, but many conservatives lauded Carson for his “bold” and “sensible” suggestions for policy reform.

Asked by Beck for his thoughts on the Second Amendment, Carson gave the popular pro-gun argument: “There’s a reason for the Second Amendment; people do have the right to have weapons.”

But when asked whether people should be allowed to own “semi-automatic weapons,” the doctor replied: “It depends on where you live.”…

Now that we’re about to decide the White House’s next occupant, let’s speculate about how previous presidents might fare were they standing for election in today’s America. What would be the presidential prospects of Thomas Jefferson or James Madison, our third and fourth presidents? Here’s my bet: They’d go down in an unprecedented landslide defeat. I could see the likes of a Joseph Stalin or a Mao Zedong winning long before a Jefferson or Madison. Let’s look at it.

In 1792, Congress appropriated $15,000 to assist some French refugees. James Madison wrote disapprovingly, “I cannot undertake to lay my finger on that article of the Constitution which granted a right to Congress of expending, on objects of benevolence, the money of their constituents.” Even though our Constitution hasn’t been amended to authorize Congress to spend on the objects of benevolence, I can’t imagine today’s Americans electing a president who’d share Madison’s view. Such a candidate would be labeled mean-spirited, racist, sexist and homophobic.

Today’s politicians might argue that James Madison, the acknowledged father of our Constitution, is all wrong. They’d say spending on the objects of benevolence (legalized theft) is authorized by the Constitution’s “promote the general welfare” clause. James Madison spoke to that argument saying, “With respect to the words general welfare, I have always regarded them as qualified by the detail of powers [enumerated in the Constitution] connected with them. To take them in a literal and unlimited sense would be a metamorphosis of the Constitution into a character which there is a host of proofs was not contemplated by its creators.”

Today’s Americans wouldn’t elect Thomas Jefferson either. He’d be labeled an extremist and a gun nut. Jefferson warned, “The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite.” Today, he’d be referring to the White House, Congress, the U.S. Supreme Court and federal regulatory agencies. Because of elite proclivities, Thomas Jefferson urged, “No man shall ever be debarred the use of arms. The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government.” Jefferson wasn’t referring to just any old government; he was referring to the U.S. federal government.

Franklin Pierce, our 14th president, took actions that would be political suicide today. In 1854, he vetoed a bill to help the mentally ill saying, “I cannot find any authority in the Constitution for public charity,” adding that to approve such spending, “would be contrary to the letter and the spirit of the Constitution and subversive to the whole theory upon which the Union of these States is founded.”

In 1887, President Grover Cleveland, our 22nd and 24th president, said when vetoing an appropriation to help drought-stricken counties in Texas, “I feel obliged to withhold my approval of the plan to indulge in benevolent and charitable sentiment through the appropriation of public funds . . . I find no warrant for such an appropriation in the Constitution.”

Today’s politicians can’t be held fully responsible for our growing constitutional contempt. We might blame them for not being statesmen. The lion’s share of the blame rests with 270 million Americans. Our elected officials simply mirror our contempt for constitutional principles and our desire to live at the expense of our fellow American. It’s unreasonable to expect a congressman, or a president to live up to his oath of office, to protect, defend and bear true allegiance to the Constitution, if doing that means political suicide.